Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 358

Happy 25th Birthday, Kate!

My first-born turns twenty-five years old today (at 4:30pm, to be exact), even as she and her two-year-old sister Rose await the arrival of the third (and final) sibling. Happy Birthday, Kate! Oh, where does the time ever go? 

[left: in our wee apartment on Flora Avenue; below: with feather boa, and Marilyn Monroe]

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kate Story

Kate Story is a writer, performer, and choreographer originally from Newfoundland. Her first novel Blasted (Killick Press) received the Sunburst Award’s honourable mention for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and was longlisted for the ReLit Awards. Her second novel, Wrecked Upon This Shore , has been called “magical and moving” (Jessica Grant, Come Thou Tortoise). In 2015 Kate was the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for her work in theatre. Recent publications include  "Demoted" in CZP's Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing 2015 ; “Yoke of Inauspicious Stars” in Carbide Tipped Pens (edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi; Kirkus Reviews tipped the story as a hit) and “Unicorn” in Stone Skin Press’s 21st century bestiary, Gods, Memes, and Monsters. Look for her story "Equus" in upcoming Clockwork Canada. www.katestory.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first novel is Blasted, published by Killick Press. Killick is relatively tiny, and works out of St. John's, so I wasn't immediately catapulted to the stars! But they let authors be very hands-on when it comes to selling books and creating events. I got to meet a lot of people on the tour I organized, and talk with them about writing, and the book, and that felt very good indeed. To have a product that I can keep flogging, and to hear from people years after the book came out, is a good feeling too, especially after years of working as a theatre type, where the product is ephemeral. As beautiful as that is, it's lovely to have something with staying power. Being published also gave me a sense of substance. I don't flinch from telling people I am a writer, at least not so much, now.

My more recent work is maybe lighter in touch. And I am writing more often, although not exclusively, what most people would call speculative fiction.

It feels both more difficult and easier. I still don't think I know what I am doing, ever. But I keep doing it.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
Actually, the first writing I did outside of some juvenilia and journals, was for theatre. I was sick of the limited range of roles for young women and then thought, well, Story, put your pedal to the metal and make something. Prose came later, when I took a course with Prim Pemberton. And I have now written some non-fiction too, just in the last few years. Oh, my fascinating life. But writing fiction is my passion. That, and theatre.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I write shitty first drafts. They come quickly, and they are shitty. And I love editing. But if I didn't have my fantastic writing group, I'd be sunk. It would take forever for me to see how to edit those first drafts. Good editorial feedback is a real short-cut for me; without it, it takes time, lots and lots of time, to see my way through the problems with the first draft. Initially, especially with novels, I tend to take piles of notes, then write in complete sentences that, while shitty, don't have typos because those drive me insane.

4 - Where does a work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I always know, when something comes to me, if it's a theatre piece, a short piece, or a novel.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like doing readings very much. I get nervous, but that's okay. I am a pretty good reader and like to entertain people. My Newfoundland accent tends to come out when I read my own work, which I find a bit mysterious and interesting.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I do tend to start with a theoretical concern that is lifeless until I find the character or characters and their passions and problems. Then it all comes to life. I don't know if there's a theme. Blasted started out with an interest in the links between folklore and modernity: how changelings are often "explained" as fetal alcohol syndrome now, or fairy stories as mental illness or addiction. I wondered, what would a contemporary experience of the Newfoundland fairy folklore - that I grew up hearing bits and pieces about from my family - look like and feel like? But it wasn't until Ruby appeared in all her ferocious glory that the story had any get up and go. Wrecked Upon This Shore, my second novel, started in an interest in Shakespeare's Tempest and the way he explores class. There's rhetoric about noble characters being inherently good, but in practice they aren't. And again, I wondered about a contemporary setting for those concerns. We tend to sweep class under the rug in Canada, yet poverty - generational poverty - is a real thing. My main character Stephen doesn't know he comes from a wealthy family, and finds out as a young adult. Are his rich relatives "good?" It started there, but really became about the people and their loves and losses and fucked-up-ness. And so on. My shorter fiction has similar beginnings in ideas that latch onto people, and only then start feeling worth writing about.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Well, it's hard because we keep feeling like we are struggling not to drown… But really, it has always been hard to be a writer. Most people experience a book in solitude, then bring that experience to a community of readers - although not necessarily. Even in genre fiction, even for the biggest fan, the book is first experienced alone. So in a sense, writing and reading carves out a space of solitude and focus, which is increasingly rare in our society. I happen to believe that without solitude and focus, we become less ourselves. And the space allows for consideration, meditation. I do think it's a good thing, although I wouldn't prescribe it, for writers to bring out important ethical issues, to encourage thought and compassion. To create characters and worlds that reflect on our own and open up possibilities.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I've never had a bad experience with an editor or with getting feedback, never. I've heard horror stories from other writers, but me, no. Coming from a theatre background means perhaps that I have an easier time with feedback. But I think at this point in my writing practice I'd know if an editor was harmful. Hope so! Personally I've loved working with editorial feedback.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Well, this is obvious.

“Heinlein's Rules for Writers

Rule One: You Must Write

Rule Two: Finish What You Start

Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order

Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market

Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold”

I am lousy at following pretty much every step but it's good advice, although I definitely rewrite before sending things out. But I see his point there: don't endlessly rewrite your precious, precious story. I see this advice as some kind of holy grail for which I quest.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (novels to performance to children's literature)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don't have any problem moving between genres, and add theatre to that list. I love moving around; I can't help it. Each story or novel has its own voice and I have to go with it. The genres are marketing categories, not soul-identities. I think moving around probably does not help my career. Whatever.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have terrible working habits. When I am busy with work or with a theatre project my prose writing gets neglected and then I start to hate myself, and when I hate myself enough then I start writing again and feel better and wonder why I ever stopped. I write best in the mornings for sure. That's my favourite way to start the day - a cup of tea and then writing until my lips and fingers go numb because I need to eat breakfast.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Doing that thing I believe the beat poets invented: cut-ups. Writing away on something related to what I am stuck with, then cutting out all the words, throwing them into the air, and literally pasting them randomly onto the paper. It creates a disconnect from the worry about sounding good and often opens up a dream-like or poetic way into the material.

Also, going for walks. Alone.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The clean, slightly briny scent of a harbour.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Visual art when it's figurative, not totally abstract, yes, that's influenced me or given me ideas. Music gives me drive sometimes, and atmosphere, even a sort of style - a lot of my characters have soundtracks. Science yes, I'm totally fascinated by new discoveries and old alike - archaeology, astronomy, etc. even though I am a lightweight amateur fan at best. I go for walks in "nature" - always seems weird to describe it as if it's separate from us. Landscape has a huge influence on me. I also write for performance, and those texts come from my body in a different sort of way than my prose. I always have to work in the studio to create that kind of text, moving, working with music, costumes, props, etc.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I have to say I keep finding myself quoting Stephen King's book On Writing. It's a terrific book on, well, you know, writing, as well as a sort of memoir. I love Ursula K. LeGuin. I love Jane Austen. I loved and was very influenced by Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and I even liked the movie. I love reading the new histories, sweeping books about everything like Salt and Collapse etc. And I love Shakespeare. Just can't get away from it. And of course adored Lord of the Rings as a kid, and The Hobbit - huge early influences. I am fond of early modern poetry, but I ain't no poet.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Too many things to list.

That being said, I've had a very interesting life thus far.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
There is no Plan B. Performing and writing are it.

I did think for a while as a young adult that I'd be an academic, but just because you get good marks at university doesn't mean you should gay marry it.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I am a miserable mean bastard when I'm not writing.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Most recently? 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by John Shapiro. And movies… Mystery Science Theatre 3000's version of Hamlet.

20 - What are you currently working on?
ARGH!! you had to ask that.

A short SF story. I don't know if it's going badly or well. Probably badly.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Donald Roger Page (October 13, 1942 - December 27, 2015)

My Uncle Donnie [Don at 5 years old, 1948, at their former homestead at 189 Hawthorne Avenue, the current location of the 417 on-ramp at Lees Avenue] died on 9pm on Sunday, December 27, six days after being admitted into hospital for Pulmonary Fibrosis. My mother’s last remaining brother, he was fifth of the seven children, leaving my Aunt Pam as the final of their group: George Ralph Page (July 10, 1932-February 22, 1985); Carol Ann Marjorie Page  (February 28, 1935-November 17, 2003); Patricia (Patsy) Elizabeth Page (October 31, 1936-June 17, 2009); my mother, Joanne Irene Page (June 30, 1940-August 19, 2010) [see my obit for her here]; Pamela Elaine Page (b. November 7, 1943); and Robert (Bob) Ian Page (August 8, 1949-June 14, 2009) [see my obit for him here].
Named after his own Uncle Don Page [(April 11, 1913- November 4, 1942), a gunner in the Royal Air Force who died during the war, mere weeks after Donnie was born], he was the one, of any of the children, who looked most like their father.
Admittedly, he was someone I didn’t know terribly well. There has always been a slight schism in my mother’s siblings that appeared to be predominantly one of geography: Ralph, Pat and Bob lived in Ottawa, with Donnie and Carol Ann in west-end Toronto, and Pam in Woodstock, Ontario. The bulk of our interactions, from the farm, were with those siblings living in Ottawa, centred around their mother’s house in Ridgemont Avenue (three blocks south of where we currently live). So: I rarely saw him, despite occasional attempts as an adult over the years to correct this (I don’t see his daughter, Erin, who is two months my senior, much more often, but at least we communicate).

[above: Don with his mother/my grandmother, Della; left: my mother with Don in Lyn, Ontario, 1943] I know he retired early, deliberately aware that none of his brothers nor his father lived to do the same. I know he worked at a bank, and was in the military as a younger man.
We occasionally saw each other at my grandmother’s house or at a small handful of weddings scattered across the 1970s and into the 80s; and later, funerals, which, between generations, family weddings. He sent bulk chain-emails instead of correspondence, and when any of us requested to receive emails and not bulk chain-missives, we wouldn’t hear from him again for months.
His own health made him unable to attend our wedding in 2013, but I was able to see him, at least, at Pam and Don’s 50th wedding anniversary gathering this past summer.
I didn’t know him as well as I’d liked; I would have liked to know him more.
[left: photo caption: "my twins," Donnie (3 years) + Pam (2 years) in their maternal grandparents', the Swain's, back yard, summer 1945; below: myself with Don and my cousin Erin at grandparent's house, Ridgemont Avenue]

Happy New Year! w/ our Christmas/holiday things and stuff, and things,

I suspect we are, after a week or two of furious activity, attempting to remain very quiet today.

Best to you and yours for 2016, and beyond.

We've been in a flurry of activity the past couple of weeks, between family and friends and further friends and other-family.



December 12-13, 2015: We did our third annual trip to Montebello [see last year's trip here] with father-in-law and his wife Teri, and brother-in-law Michael and his (very pregnant) wife Alexis and their toddler Duncan, which Rose enjoyed tremendously. 

Now that the cousins are old enough to really interact, there was much running and running and running, with Rose directing Duncan (pulling and pushing) into various directions. Come on, Duncan. Come on! she'd chirp, and begin running.

She opened presents, had big buffet meals and we even explored the hotel a bit (so much running).

Rose was much happier in the pool this year as well (unlike last year). Last year it was a struggle to get her in, and this year, a struggle to get her out.


December 24, 2015: Now that we're alternating (after last year's hosting of my family at Christmas), we headed out to my sister's house by the old homestead for our usual Christmas-y business of presents, food, Christmas, etcetera. Given Kate is working two jobs, she wasn't able to make it out at all (which was disappointing; and felt strange to have a Christmas without her).

It also felt strange to have such high temperatures. I kept wandering outside, jacketless in sock feet, to see the full moon. Christine, nearly six months pregnant, pointed out that her mother was apparently also pregnant (with her) during the previous Christmas Day full moon (1977), a year that ALSO saw a new (the first!) Star Wars film appear. What might it all mean?

Given Rose is only two, she does enjoy opening gifts (not limited to her own), and handing out gifts to folk, she doesn't entirely understand about opening everything before enjoying what she's opened. And there's a part of me that doesn't necessarily want to discourage her simply opening something and playing with that for a while, before having to tear into the next thing. I was tempted to set aside the presents she hadn't opened yet, for the sake of her own attention to what she had already opened, for another week or two. No no, don't enjoy that, you need to open all the rest, etcetera.

Not that she necessarily got a ton of things, but a small mound, as toddlers do. 

Of course, Rose loved seeing her cousins and running, running, running. Given our reluctance to wrestle the child into sleep in a strange space, it seemed easier, somehow, to drive the 30-40 minutes home when it was all over, and slip the wee girl into her own bed.


December 25, 2015: We woke in our own space, and Christine roused me for the sake of Rose + stockings + presents (why couldn't we sleep in? I mean, really). Some of her favourite items included her matching rain coat and umbrella (which match, also, her school backback), her new shovel, and a guitar. The guitar was for 3 year olds, but she ended up (through use) destroying her dollar-store guitar (which she played constantly), so wanted to get her something slightly upgraded. She's already been playing and singing with it daily.

And post-presents, we ended up at mother-in-law's house, where we saw Michael, Alexis, Duncan and new baby Adelaide for brunch, presents, nap and a big Christmas dinner.


Rose was so wound up from the day, we extended our fifteen minute drive home to nearly an hour (Dow's Lake, Old Ottawa South, Ottawa South, etcetera) to attempt to get her out in the car, which, of course, didn't work out at all. Fortunately, it was only another twenty minutes at home before we got her out completely, which still allowed us to watch our DVR'd Doctor Who Christmas Special before bed, instead of having to wait another day or two.

December 26, 2015: We headed east into Gloucester to visit Christine's McNair cousins, Carla, Paul and David, who were hosting a gathering of Ottawa-ish McNairs for the holidays. Christine's father is one of six, one of whom has six children, most of whom also have multiple children of their own, meaning there were mounds of children for Rose to run around with, even if most family members weren't able to make it. So many McNairs! I can barely keep track of which kids belong to which of Christine's cousins.

Of course, Rose had an enormous amount of fun running and running and running, and managing to fill herself up with a variety of foods (we attempted to limit her sugar intake, but she is very sneaky). And for some reason, I managed not to take a single photo (despite having camera in pocket the entire time).

December 27, 2015: On Sunday night, I'd decided to host a gathering of extended family: inviting my father, sister etc and daughter Kate, as well as an array of my mother's side of the family, which we really don't see often enough (and again, I didn't manage to take a single photo). I collected Kate a couple of hours early so she could hang out with us quietly, before all the madness began; once home, I rang the doorbell to announce to Rose and Christine we had returned, to which Rose apparently responded with glee, "My Katie! My Katie!" After opening sister-gifts of boots (Kate has quite a gift for picking out presents for her wee sister) and a puppy-puppet, Rose dragged big sister Kate around the house for an hour or so, until I finally checked in, to see if she needed to be saved (she did).

Eventually, my cousins Kim and Patti, along with Patti's husband, Joss, arrived, as did my sister and her brood, and Aunt Bette and cousin Lori-Ann, filling our house with food and drink and conversation. The children ran and ran around (Rose's favourite game with cousins). I like very much that I'm finally in a house where I can host such gatherings of friends and/or family, most of whom really don't gather nearly enough. We spoke of just how many of my mother's family smoked (far more than I knew), and a couple of other stories I hadn't yet heard, as well as the ongoing health issues of our Uncle Don, laid up in hospital since December 21st.

And why, again, and did I not take any photos (especially given that Rose apparently had a new/different dress/outfit for every one of these events)? Apparently Kate managed a selfie or two with her toddler sister (an impressive achievement, I'd think), but I don't (yet) have copies of any of those (and I'm not on instagram). Rose, also, managed to convince her cousin Duncan to pilfer multiple Turtles for her, from one of the higher shelves. Sigh.

December 28, 2015: An enormously busy day that opened with a dentist appointment, before heading over to our pal (and recent John Newlove Poetry Award-winner) Ron Seatter's house for brunch with him and his charming wife Barb. En route there we caught an email from a cousin, informing us that my Uncle Don had died the night prior (my obituary posts tomorrow). We had a lovely visit, and Rose played with their ten year old daughter for an hour or so (until she was starting to wear down from toddler-play), and saw the enormous amount of furniture and other items that Ron has built over the past couple of years (his devices are impressive).


And then, of course, our Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta, which I've already posted about, here . I even manged to get a couple of hours of solitary writing in at the tavern (with a couple of items, including a David Foster Wallace collection of essays gifted to me from my dear wife, Christine), before all the nonsense began, attempting (still, again) to complete that manuscript of short fiction I've been trying to complete (slowly) since before Rose was born...

The next afternoon was Star Wars, of course, thanks to childcare (well, once we dug the car out, obviously) from Carla, Paul and David. The film was MAGNIFICENT, and we only got stuck driving out in the Gloucester-wilds a couple of times. Go away, snow, you're drunk!

Can I go back to work again, now?

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Ravi Shankar on Drunken Boat

Drunken Boat , an international online journal of the arts, is one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. It publishes works of art endemic to the medium of the web, such as video, sound, hypertext, digital animation, web art, and multimedia/cross-genre works of art and letters, alongside innovative works of prose, poetry, translation, reviews, interviews, and photography. We focus on work that stretches form, irrespective of aesthetics. We include special folios on such subjects as Native American Women’s Poetry, Aphasia, and the Black Mountain School, among many others.
Drunken Boat has published established artists and writers such as DJ Spooky, Norman Mailer, Franz Wright, Kay Ryan and Sol LeWitt as well as emerging artists and writers. We are also very invested in international art and literature and have a large worldwide readership. In addition to the magazine, we have published three books, including Collier Nogues’ The Ground I Stand on Is Not My Ground and Lisa Russ Spaar's Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry.
Ravi Shankar (1975-) is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or edited ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including What Else Could it Be (2015), the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove, called the work of one of America’s finest younger poets by CT Poet Laureate Dick Allen, finalist for the Connecticut Book Award Instrumentality (2004) and Autobiography of a Goddess a forthcoming collection of translations of Andal, the 8th century Tamil poet/saint, co-edited with Priya Sarukkai Chabria. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong and a Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University.
1 – When did Drunken Boat first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?The conception for Drunken Boat began in 1999 and we published our first issue in 2000 and the quantum leap that our incipient vision took from where we began to where we are now would have been inconceivable to me then and still remains remarkable to me now. We began as a kind of one-off side project between two old friends, the architect Mike Mills and myself, and we thought we’d showcase the work of those writers and artists we admired who we thought weren’t being widely seen, just for our own pleasure. Little could we have anticipated what publishing online would mean, for soon after the launch of our first issue, we began receiving work from places as far-flung as Australia and China. Now Drunken Boat has a staff of over thirty individuals worldwide and we now publish books. So we could not have foreseen what we would become and our original goals have certainly shifted in time. Fifteen years in, it’s time to become self-sustaining and my own real prerogative is to insure that Drunken Boat has a life well into the future. What I’ve learned through the process of creating the journal is too immense to distill briefly, but primarily I’ve learned about managing different personalities and how to sustain a long running art endeavor on a shoestring budget, all of the splendor and frustration it entails. Clearly the former outweighs the latter or I wouldn’t still be doing it.  
2 – What first brought you to publishing?A frustration with what I was seeing published, for one, where the most innovative and challenging works of art were being ignored, but also a sense of the consanguinity of the arts. Artists in different media share a curatorial space with writers too infrequently, so we hoped to change that by creating a garden for true cross-pollination. Having started Drunken Boat with a visual artist, I really hoped that we might try to use the magazine as a forum for those kinds of works that couldn’t exist in print. Because our ethos has always been publishing works of art endemic to the medium of the web, we wanted to publish multimedia work, work that used the digital as part of its compositional strategy and we were never interested in replicating the paradigm of the page. Really we still aren’t. However in 2010, we were brought an interesting project, which was the posthumous poems of Reetika Vazirani and that was the kind of project we just couldn’t turn down. That led us down the path of publishing more books and we plan to do a title or two a year from here on out.
3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?Small press publishing is vital to our overall health as a culture. I see an analogy in the role of microorganisms in the human body. Of course we are always concerned about those larger vital organs, the liver and the heart and the spleen, but the body is not an island; instead it’s a complex ecosystem where bacterial cells outnumber human cells nearly 10-to-1. Microbes, the flora of the body, are vitally important in everything from our immune system to our respiratory system, even though you can’t really see them working. Similarly small press publishing lies under the surface of our culture, nowhere nearly as vast and recognized as the machinations of mass media, and yet the work that is done there is vital to creating the environment necessary to complicate those homogenous, stereotype-reinforcing romantic comedies and party anthems that pass for shared culture. I think small press publishing gives voice to the voiceless, allows for experimentation outside the marketplace and ultimately evolves thinking in a way hard to quantify but impossible to deny.
4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?Since its inception, Drunken Boat has always pushed on the boundaries of the status quo, and so I feel like we have always wanted to collapse the distinctions of genre, of aesthetic school, of self-replicating vision. Drunken Boat was among the first journals to combine literary arts with multimedia expression, and I still believe we are one of the few venues where web art, sound art, video, hypertext, interactivity, photo, translation, reviews, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and design all converge. We are constantly looking for those works of art that exist in the interstices between what we might consider normal literature, for those works of art that either transcend the printed page or ask difficult questions of the reader/viewer/participant in the meaning making process. I also believe that our dedication to global literature is unique; we’ve published writers from Korea, Eritrea, Australia, India and from various Native American tribes. We also have focused on issues such as aphasia and exploration that have not found an outlet in other literary venues. Finally we are dedicated to the egalitarian distribution of the arts, which includes publishing the work of outsider artists, spoken word poets, true mongrels of the spirit, alongside Pulitzer Prize winners.
5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?We haven’t published chapbooks, but full-length collections and I think the best way to get these out in the world is to use technologies like print-on-demand and also ask that our authors do their best in promoting their collections, giving readings, helping send out review copies, etc. We also love to foster synchronicity between platforms, so for instance when we published Lisa Russ Spaar’s The Hide and Seek Muse http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780988241602/the-hideandseek-muse-annotations-of-contemporary-poetry.aspx, a collection of her incisive columns from the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Arts-and-Academe blog, we also published a folio dedicated to the collection that included audio of the poets she was reviewing reading their work and some of the essays from the collection:  http://www.drunkenboat.com/db17/hide-seek-muse. Our most recent book by Collier Nogues, The Ground I Stand On is Not My Ground http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780988241626/the-ground-i-stand-on-is-not-my-ground.aspxhas its own dedicated website where you can peruse the source texts that Nogues used to make her erasures: http://thegroundistandon.com/. We think that kind of back-and-forth helps the books to have a vigorous life inside and outside of print.
6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?Again it depends; sometimes if we see something that has a lot of promise but doesn’t quite work, we will work closely with the author to make it resonate better. Our genre editors are terrific at doing this kind of work. In those case, we might suggest not just line edits but also a different ending, a place to elaborate or excise, or a new direction to pursue. Other times, we are very light and just fix typos or lineation issues, but always in consultation with the author.
7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?We used Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org/ and though it depends, we do print runs from 500-1000 copies and are always willing to reprint.
8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?We have a fairly large staff of about 30 individuals from around the world and we often work with outside Contributing Editors. We love doing this because we can tap into their expertise which often varies from our own. So for instance, Kristin Prevallet edited our Trance Poetics folio http://www.drunkenboat.com/db16/trance-poetics in one of my favorite issues; Jean Jacques Poucel put together the OULIPO compendium http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/, which still stands as a monumental look back at the past and future of creating under constraint; and Kalela Williams put together a folio on the Affrilchan Arts for us http://www.drunkenboat.com/db20/affrilachian-arts. Without the influence of those outside editors, we never would have had those rich, diverse folios. The only drawback is that we have a very specific editorial and design process, and often times it is difficult to get them acclimated to our process. Sometimes having outside editors creates a lot of extra work for our staff but we are getting better at streamlining it.
9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?I have internalized my critical eye and I am constantly amazed by the variety of what is being published. And so if I wasn’t an editor/publisher, I think I might have been more content to settle into a comfortable groove doing the same kinds of things over and over again, writing some version of a familiar lyric poem, but because I’m constantly being confronted with such a welter of unexpected approaches to writing that challenge by own preconceptions, I find that I am forced to evolve in response.
10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?Well I have always written the Editor’s Message to each issue of Drunken Boat, but that’s the extent of it, save for exceptions like when I translated Hervé Le Tellier and Jacques Bens with Laurence Petit for the OULIPO folio http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/translators/shankar/shankar.html. I don’t think taking back the means of production is bad thing and indeed there’s a long history of pamphleteering that’s currently making a comeback with small presses and blogs, but just personally, I prefer having the quality of my work judged by someone other than myself and like Epictetus, I believe we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
11– How do you see Drunken Boat evolving?After having run the magazine for 15 years, I’m thinking stepping back to concentrate on Development and let an energetic new Executive Director take over. We need to become self-sustaining and concretize what we have laid the roots for over so many years. Doing book is new for us and we’ve also had conversations about releasing a sound arts primer with recordings from our live events from around the world. Perhaps we’ll release this digitally….and on cassette tape. In all seriousness, the magazine has moved to Drupal and we have a consistent design team for the first time ever and that will allow us to concentrate on providing a forum for those works of art that explore the frontiers of form.
12– What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?To have started on a whim an endeavor that has persisted for so long is of great pride to me. Much of that is owed to all of the amazing people I have worked with over the years, each who had their own style and sensibility which is reflected in the pages. In some ways, our magazine traces our own collective digital lineage from the infancy of those early lo-fi artworks, those pieces created in Shockwave and Story Space, to more sophistication. I think what may be overlooked about Drunken Boat is how much we’ve accomplished on so small a budget and how much more we could accomplish with a bigger budget. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and we depend upon reader support to survive. Not having consistent funding has been a source of frustration.
13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?There simply weren’t any so we just made it up as we went along. Once we realized that we were actually not just a one-off project but an actual online literary journal we looked around and realized there were others of us—Alt-X, Eclectica, The Cortland Review , Big Bridge, Failbetter, and soon after us, Tarpaulin Sky , Blackbirdand wordforword , Softblow and QLRS from Singapore, Jacket from Australia. So we began to be aware that others were doing something similar to us. My own editorial experience was certainly shaped from being a reader at the Paris Review when it was in the basement of George Plimpton’s Eastside brownstone and I has influenced by the seminal work, particularly with writers interviews, that the journal was doing. But otherwise we discovered where to go by going.
14– How does Drunken Boat work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Drunken Boat in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?Drunken Boat is part of a large network of interlaced literary and artistic production. We share an affinity with those early online publications such as La Petite Zine , Exquisite Corpse , Blackbird , Memorious , Failbetter , and Jacket , who importantly offered us in a model similar to our own with respect to international and innovative poetics. We see affinity with BOMB , for their work crossing over into the visual art world; Aesthetica Magazine , for their work with sound art; Tuesday for what they do make materiality happen; and our new Executive Director’s production Anomalous, for their investment in translation and experimental literature. We dig the work in A Public Space , Canary , Lana Turner is Dead , The Iowa Review, Harper’s, Subtropics, Tin House, A Brooklyn Rail…the list is endless but the important thing is that we feel those connections deeply. We have co-hosted events with Ugly Duckling, Les Figues, Rattapallax, The Dalkey Archives, Midway, and hosted performances in arts spaces, outdoor parks, and people’s homes. One event, “Recharging the Sensorium” was hosted at the New Britain Museum of American Artand Torp Theater, drawing nearly 1,000 people over the course of a weekend. We hope to expand the idea of literary community can be, speaking both to the neophyte and acolyte alike. 
15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?Think I just answered that, but I will add that we do try to have launch events and try to represent at book fairs and festivals. We have recordings of sound artist Cary Peppermint at Pete’s Candy Store doing some improvisational avant bubble gum pop he deemed somewhere on the spectrum between Brittany Spears and John Cage and photographs of members of the Oulipo convening for dinner in Brooklyn. These are testament to the sense we have of art and literature being a living organism.
16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?This one is self-evident, no? Digitally born and bred to spread new forms: Drunken Boat.
17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for? Yes we do. We are currently on an editorial hiatus as we transition our staff but have a number of exciting folios coming up including on the OuTransPo, Sardinian culture and the Glass House Shelter Project, a remarkable program bringing college accredited classes to homeless shelters. We are open to almost everything that is quality, well-conceived and executed, regardless of aesthetic bent or school of ideation, but we don’t want un-ironic cowboy or Jesus, unreconstructed pap, overwrought and un-transfigured confession, or arbitrary experiment that could be just as arbitrarily reordered. Do send us things we are not expecting: interviews, collaborations, mixed media, archival projects, global and transnational lyricism, and much more. 
18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.This one is easy because we only have three titles published so far. Our first book Radha Says are the posthumous poems of the remarkable and tragic figure, Reetika Vazirani, a manuscript meticulously reconstructed through an act of literary forensics. Our second, Lisa Russ Spaar’s Hide-and-Seek Muse collects the best of her columns from the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Arts-and-Academe blog on contemporary poetry. Pithy, wise, and insightful, Spaar’s essays take on everyone from Charles Wright to Brenda Hillman. Our most recent book won our inaugural first book prize and was chosen by Forrest Gander. The title is Collier Nogues’ The Ground I Stand on Is Not My Ground and is a provoking collection of erasures with an interactive website to accompany it. Our fourth collection will be out this fall and it is “Union,” the best of 15 years of Drunken Boat and 50 years of Singaporean literature and it will be co-published by Ethos Press. We hope to continue doing a few titles a year in addition to putting out a magazine that explores and exhibits the best contemporary art and literature.
12or 20 (small press) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Damon Ferrell Marbut

Damon Ferrell Marbut is author of the critically acclaimed novel Awake in the Mad World , the Amazon bestselling book of poems Little Human Accidents and the Stonewall Award-nominated collection Human Crutches . garbageflower is his third poetry title. Stay updated online at www.facebook.com/DamonFMarbut or on Twitter @dfmnola.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
The first published was a novel called Awake in the Mad World. When it finally made print I started acting as a marketer, which pissed me off but was necessary at the time because only small circles in a few North American cities knew of my work and what I was doing. But I met a lot of great people doing the same thing and it became a fine experience. This new book, garbageflower, is a poetry collection. It’s different from my fiction because more and more people are reading my poems. And asking me to read them.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I’ve written poems since youth. I was encouraged with this early on. My family moved me around a lot so writing in short bursts became habitual. When teachers took notice, I I felt important creatively and kept with it.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
This question reminds me of a friend who has a PhD in Philosophy from Purdue. Very serious cat. Sweet as hell, but so fucking serious. Straight to the point about everything, even if misguided. One thing he said to me a few months ago was, “yeah, when you’re on a new book, you work really fast.” I never paid attention to that. But all things considered, I’ve never spent more than six months on a book. I used to take notes and apply them to a manuscript, but as I’ve done more work I realized as taste buds change, so does process. For me at least. garbageflower came out as largely the same book, even though most of it was written summer of ’09 and poems were added and/or replaced over the six years that led to me getting ready to send it off.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I know when a book is happening. But to begin either, it’s always been a line or a character’s sound, tone, voice, what have you. I’ll connect with this sense of Other and then go with it. Each book is so different that I think it helps that I’m patient with what comes to me creatively, rather than force it.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Readings I’m comfortable with. I’ve done plenty, in different cities and venues. I do have a few cocktails beforehand usually. My favorite two readings both involved meeting students and answering their questions about the books. Once in New York, the other in New Orleans.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I just don’t think being alive is super serious, and jobs are dumb, and conflict is avoidable, and chaos is man-made, and having money is dangerous, but the pen on page is necessary. It’s so fucking strange to me that I’ve been like this, philosophically and psychologically. But I TRIED to do so much for meaning in my life when younger, and I THOUGHT so much. I’ve learned since I started publishing that I’m just chronicling my life in each book, poetry or fiction. And whatever theories I may have held about existence, they’re getting clarified through each project. I don’t know a damn thing. Never did. I just play puppeteer to dancing words. That’s cool to me.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Currently being a writer, in my opinion, means conserving basic principles of communication. Being a “writer” to a lot of people is equal to being a poor mess. Unless you’re doing some tacky political shit, or you’re writing in some entertainment genre that makes a billion dollars at the box office. I still look at being a writer as necessary, and I believe being a poet in whatever form or capacity is precious and vital.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
One has to find the right editor. When I was first sending out poetry manuscripts, I was tired of sitting on the mountain of good and bad stuff I’d produced. The publisher/editor who picked me up, Peter Jelen at BareBackPress, actually read over the first draft of garbageflower before it was garbageflower, and he liked it but wanted something else at the time. So we ended up developing a relationship that made two other poetry books happen before garbageflower. And he became a great friend because we agreed and disagreed on a lot of shit. I even helped him with some other books he had his hands on. We became partners in the work. So an editor is real and good and lovely. Just gotta get with the most appropriate one for what you’re trying to accomplish. That takes time and searching.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
It’s ok to forgive yourself.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Awesome question. Man, I was told in grad school I couldn’t do both.  And so it was a learning process to turn on and off those brains, until I realized I was misinformed and that I had that ability to do as much of either as I wanted. After that, it was about learning how much time each project required. But writing both, being able to write both that works for the reader (after, of course, it works for me, first), is great because I can push myself on to the page as I feel and know my readers will get it.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I write when I have something going on in the bean. Otherwise I drink and work and listen to music and smile a lot. I don’t do that “oh, I write four hours a day” horse shit. I actually got in an argument with a cat in Florida about how much he thought I should write. I cut him loose as a pal. Everyone is different.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Beer at the corner store. And I also spend time with friends who I usually don’t see because of how isolated I get.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I’ve lived in too many places around the country to know that answer. But I was recently in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains and my friend Steven always had bacon and eggs going in the morning. Our windows were always open. So crisp air there, and promising breakfast smells, yeah, that was home for a bit. I liked that.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Musical rhythm affects my dialogue sometimes. Jazz is in my fiction and poetry. Those beats and stories, the nonverbal loveliness, all that. So good.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
James Baldwin is the best writer I’ve read. And I love the gravity, as well, of Marquez. Dorianne Laux writes poems that connect me to sex and earth and challenged divinity and that’s a pretty fucking awesome feeling. To believe and just coast.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Look in the mirror and be proud.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I thought I was going to be a lawyer for a while, then a professor. Then I realized I detested title chasing and I went adrift and accepted what was ahead. If not a writer, I would have gone into business and voluntarily fallen on a sword.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Nothing made me write. It’s like pursuing a meal. Go long enough without food and you go nuts. Go long enough without putting words down, even if they need to be balled up and thrown in the fire, you go nuts.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I took a long time to get to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test . But as historical context, which is how I perceived it in terms of purpose served, I saw value in it. And concerning the last great film, I dunno. Hollywood sucks. Big Bad Love , in my opinion, is a great movie. Fine attention given to the work of Mississippi writer Larry Brown.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m 35 pages into a new poetry book. And here in New Orleans the ubiquitous “they” is pushing me to keep with a stage play I started a while back. But it’s dark as night, and I don’t feel dark right now, so it’s poems when I get to them right now. Otherwise I’m working on being ok with life happening beyond my control.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Slow Poetry in America, A Poetry Quarterly: #1-3

Knowing how to joke in the worldbut not in a poem. The solemnpaintings are the ones that attract me,& in some there’s a secret lightness,a simplicity of heart.
If what I’m saying is true, it won’tbe “important.” Nothing knew,not new. That I’m amazedby the things I’ve seen in my life.The world, its people, places. Lostroads, traveled by pilgrims.Ways of life, invisible traditions.The last of so many things:vestiges, whispers.
There’s the hint that is a rose.What I became aware of oncein poems. Perhaps it was a song.
The scent left behind. Follow it. (Kim Dorman, “Ground”)
I’m fascinated by the first three issues of the pamphlet series/journal Slow Poetry in America is a quarterly poetry newsletter edited by Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen, and Michael Cavuto. Each issue is printed in Toronto, ON and features one poet, and can be mailed anywhere in the world. Annual subscriptions ($10) are made on a rolling basis and will include the next four issues.
Bookstore/Institution Subscriptions are $25.00 annually and will receive 10 copies of each newsletter. Please email mcavuto@gmail.com for Bookstore/Institution Subscriptions.
SPIA subscriptions seek only to cover the costs of printing & publishing, and do not earn any monetary profit.
Reminiscent of the pamphlets produced through Rachel Moritz’ WinteRed [see her 12 or 20 (small press) questions here] or Sylvester Pollet’s infamous Backwoods Broadsides, a series which ended an impressive twelve-year run back in 2006, Slow Poetry in America is a self-proclaimed “newsletter” that shares a title with Smith’s own most recent title, produced in 2015 by Victoria, Texas publisher Cuneiform Press, TROUBLE
someone who’sin troublesometimesif i makemy trouble anintellectual thingthen i can sit at the tablesometimes (Marion Bell)
The first three issues are “GROUND,” by Texas poet Kim Dorman, “8 Poems,” by Philadelphia poet Marion Bell (June 2015) and “Sound Science: Selections,” by the late Texas (by way of Panama and New York) poet Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) from his 1992 trade collection Sound Science (October 2015), all of which exists as an introduction to poets I hadn’t even heard of previously. It is curious to see how Slow Poetry in America, at least so far, works to bring the work of Texan poets north of the border (which makes sense, given the decade-plus that Smith and Nguyen lived and worked there), and if this series is one that works as an extension of their prior work with Skanky Possum, or if it will be working to also engage with the literary community around them, in their new home in Toronto. Either way, these are compelling publications, and teasingly small, which can only entice.
PROTECTION
Sometimes I’m saying I love youThose words in English meanI will not let anyone hurt youBut me (Lorenzo Thomas)

Kroetsching The Long-Poem Sequence with Phil Hall, Sage Hill Writing Experience, April-May 2016

Speaks for itself. Information here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Vanessa Jimenez Gabb

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb is the author of the chapbooks midnight blue (Porkbelly Press, 2015) and Weekend Poems (dancing girl press, 2014). Her first full-length poetry manuscript, Images for Radical Politics, was the Editor's Choice for Rescue Press' 2015 Black Box Poetry Prize and is forthcoming. She is the co-founder of Five Quarterly and teaches at Newark Academy. She is from and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
1 - How did your first chapbook or book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?My first chapbook gave me hope. I look forward to what my first book will bring.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction? I came to fiction first, actually. I've also always thought in images, and then I took a Deborah Digges' course in college, "Dickinson, Bishop, and Plath". And it was over.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes? I definitely write in my head as I go but don't get it out as regularly as I would like to and should. When I finally sit down to it, it can come quickly then, but sometimes it doesn't.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning? Definitely the former.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? I get a bit of anxiety around readings but I am always glad I do them. I do love hearing others read too.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are? I feel like I'm always considering questions of longing.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be? I'd like to think the eternal role is to declare.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? I'm looking forward to the experience!
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? I was watching an episode of The Affair the other night and one character basically says to the other, Don't make the mistake of wanting someone to understand everything about you, thinking they fail you somehow, that it's not true love. There will always be something about them that baffles you. No one gets all the help they need. But being with someone makes it a little less lonely. And that makes a big difference. It was just a striking thing for me to hear in that moment, on that day.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin? It's generally all over the place. I'm at work early and get home late, so whenever I can. Once I get going with something that seems promising, I'm impatient and try to get to it as often as I can.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? I listen more closely. I read.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home? Rice and beans cooking.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art? Yes, all those, everything. You can trust a writer with anything.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? I always look forward to the work of my peers, who I'm always looking to to show me the way. I always look back to the books that have been with me a long time, that I'm always looking to to show me the way: The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera immediately come to mind.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?Improve my Spanish and go to Colombia, where my mother is from. We're going in August and I'm on that Duolingo. I know it's going to affect me so much and I can't wait.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer? I'd love to be a chef!
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?Honestly it was the only thing that ever felt natural to me.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee moved me utterly and Seth Landman's Confidence is a book I wish I had written. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution was dope.
19 - What are you currently working on? A long love poem.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;

rob mclennan : Queen Mob’s Review of 2015

I was asked to participate in “ Queen Mob’s Review of 2015 ” over at Queen Mob’s Teahouse , in which I recommend books, chapbooks and other somesuch by Sarah Manguso, Jessica Smith, Marilyn Irwin, Rosmarie Waldrop, Phil Hall, Etgar Keret and plenty of others.

My list of 'best of' sits in a rather lengthy post alongside equivalent lists by Rauan Klassnik, Evan Tognotti, Greg Bem, S Cearley, Gideon Morrow, Eve Johnson, Reb Livingston, Nicholas Rombes, Natalia Panzer, Masha Tupitsyn, Jeremy Fernando, Allison Grimaldi-Donahue, Vladimir Savich, Legacy Russell, Scherezade Siobhan, Erik Kennedy, Menachem Feuer, Russell Bennetts and Amanda Earl.

I also have my fifth annual “‘best of’ list of Canadian poetry books” list up on the dusie blog on January 1st. Watch for it!